oil sands – Moe Lane

Washington Post publishes sloppy anti-Koch hit piece, forgets to correct mistakes.

Wow, but Wonkblog has gone downhill since Ezra Klein left….

Yeah, I’m shocked to write that, too.

Anyway, here’s the summary of today’s epic oil sand reporting oopsie, in a nutshell:

The Washington Post’s Wonkblog’s Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin essentially wrote a hit post on the Koch brothers (two high demons in American Orthodox Progressivism, or AOP) by attempting to link them to Canadian oil sands (a terrifying place of pure evil and fear, likewise in AOP theology) – and hence, to the Keystone Pipeline (a harbinger of the End Times to the AOP faithful). You have to understand: the goal here? Getting the right keywords in place, for the benefit of SEO. That’s all that Mufson and Eilperin cared about. It’s certainly why they didn’t correct the post…
Oh, yes, the post needs correcting. Turns out – as per Powerline – that the “biggest lease holder in the northern Alberta oil sands is” not “a subsidiary of Koch Industries.” Oil sands in Alberta don’t have any of the big oil companies heavily involved, not that Koch Industries is a big oil company. Or really prepared to make money off of Keystone. Or even likely to.
So why did that Wonkblog post get published? Power Line, again, notes that Ms. Eilperin is linked through her husband to the fundamentalist environmentalist wing of the AOP: and while it would be rude of me to suggest that serving that faction might be more important to her than mere journalistic integrity please note the exact word that I used.
So, what was Steven Mufson and Juliet Eilperin’s response to it being pointed out that they wrote a factually challenged hit piece on the behest of radical religious fanatics? “The Powerline article itself, and its tone, is strong evidence that issues surrounding the Koch brothers’ political and business interests will stir and inflame public debate in this election year. That’s why we wrote the piece.”
Using that… ‘logic’ …I could write a post on RedState about how Barack Obama probably relaxes on the weekend by castrating sheep* and anybody who objected to that would be justifying my article on the grounds that at least we’re all inflaming public debate.

Depressing. Say what you like about Ezra Klein, but at least he has some self-respect.

*I am absolutely certain that I could find somebody who would be willing to assure me that of course Barack Obama castrates sheep, particularly if I promised to not directly reference that assurance.

Scene from the Conflict Oil Wars: Austan Goolsbee v. the Naive Greens

Quick background: there’s a lot of oil in Canada. Quite a bit of it is tied up in the form of oil sands, which radical Greenies hate with the same passion that normal people reserve for ax murderers or child rapists. Despite this hatred, the Canadians have noticed that the price of oil makes oil sand development highly cost effective, which is why they were planning to build the Keystone Pipeline to ship the stuff from Canada to American refineries and distribution centers. This promised to make both America and Canada quite a bit of cash and make our energy costs significantly cheaper, which is why the Greenies successfully pressured President Obama to ‘temporarily’ delay the project.

Anyway: strictly speaking, it is not quite accurate to say that former White House Council of Economic Advisors Chair (and Obama mouthpiece) Austan Goolsbee called opponents of the proposed Keystone Pipeline “naive.” It’s more accurate to say that he called the idea of opposing it ‘naive’ – in fact, that’s pretty much explicitly what Goolsbee said: “It’s a bit naïve to think the tar sands would not be developed if they don’t build that pipeline.” And it is a bit naive, of course.

But then, opposing the pipeline is also homophobic.

And misogynistic.

And anti-Semitic.

Not to mention straight-up racist.

Commie-loving, too.

Continue reading Scene from the Conflict Oil Wars: Austan Goolsbee v. the Naive Greens

Ethical oil’s excellent enemies: Saudi Arabia & Think Progress.

Perfect together!

One of the nicest things about being a mainstream supporter of the Global War on Terror is that you are blessed, for a given value of ‘blessed,’ with a collection of the vilest, most despicable, most appalling domestic enemies in recent political history. Nazis, Communists, Stalinists, Maoists, blackshirt anarchists, Jew-haters of various flavors, anti-human deep ecologists, anti-Israel conspiracy theorists… honestly, by the time that the antiwar movement was done they had managed to taint most of the groups out there that I casually despise, and virtually all of the progressive ones. I’d like to pretend that this marvelous example of contagious karma isn’t really that big a deal, but honesty forces me to admit that the nasty, somewhat cognitively challenged nature of the Other Side was a powerful factor in keeping the antiwar folks firmly under the rocks that are in fact their native environment.

I mention this because it’s exciting to see this dynamic play out over in the ‘ethical oil’ arena as well. Continue reading Ethical oil’s excellent enemies: Saudi Arabia & Think Progress.

Only Homophobes Hate Oil Sands.

God save us all from Crusading fanatical Greenies.

Why can’t we have more blunt talking like this in the States? Canadian Alykhan Velshi of Ethical Oil, a relaunched site dedicated to promoting Canada’s oil reserves (particularly its oil sands reserves) is cheerfully trying to do well by doing good.

“When petroleum reserves were deposited around the world, it is unfortunate that they were all given to the world’s bastards,” he said. “With the exception of Canada, most of them are with the world’s bastards. You need to recognize that when you are buying oil.”

And, just to make sure that people get the point:

Continue reading Only Homophobes Hate Oil Sands.